


Stages

by PoppyAlexander



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Anal Sex, Angry John, Angst, Blow Jobs, Closeted Relationship, Established Relationship, Failed Encounters, Frottage, Hand Jobs, Heartbroken Greg, Johnlock - Freeform, Johnstrade, M/M, Multi, OT3, Polyamory, Post-Reichenbach, Relationship breakdown, Sexual Dysfunction, Sherlock Wants His Life Back, Sherlock returns, Sherlock's PTSD, Sherlock's scars, Sherstrade, Threesome - M/M/M, johnlockstrade - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-14
Updated: 2016-11-14
Packaged: 2018-08-31 02:14:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8559397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoppyAlexander/pseuds/PoppyAlexander
Summary: After Sherlock fell, John and Greg found themselves two widowers of the same unmarried man, a situation which ultimately proved as unendurable as the loss itself. Upon Sherlock's return, one man greets him open-armed while the other is consumed by rage at Sherlock's betrayal and cannot forgive. Amid reminiscences of better times, evidence of old wounds, and an imperative to set right those things that went so wrong, the three search for a way back to each other.





	1. Chapter 1

 

“Close your eyes.”

Whispering, ragged, astride Greg’s sturdy hips. His face is doing that thing again—the thing Sherlock cannot name, not because he does not know what it is, but because in the eighteen days since his Lazurus rise he has come to know it too intimately—an etching around his eyes, lip-corners pulling down, and he blinks too fast with shining eyes.

“Close your eyes, Greg.” Sherlock circles his wrist and draws his hand, just there, wraps their fingers around, guides them. Sherlock sinks, and sways. “Feel that?” Greg is withering inside him; all is not yet lost, but soon could be. Laying his free hand against the stubbled cheek, stroking with his thumb in time with the rest, a sonata of hands and hips and now his thumb with its newly scarred knuckle. “Close your eyes.”

He shakes his head. “I can’t.” Too afraid of somehow losing Sherlock all over again.

And though bearing witness to his pain seems a fitting penance, it stings Sherlock to see it there in his frowning mouth and in the vertical creases between his eyebrows. With exceptions for bathroom visits and one meeting with the chief inspector, he has not let Sherlock out of his sight since his return. As they feign normalcy they are nowhere near achieving—reading, typing, washing up, sitting in their old armchairs with their feet sharing the footstool—Greg’s eyes dart up every minute or so, just checking. When he can, he keeps a hand on him as well, petting him, tangling their fingers together, holding his knee. It’s all to be expected. It’s killing them both.

Clearly it’s hopeless now, but Sherlock goes on swaying front to back, draws his own focus forward and outward and they stare hard into each other’s eyes, Greg chanting his name as if it means _yes, yes_ , and more besides. Sherlock gazes reassurances into Greg’s wet brown eyes until he cannot but close his own eyes because he is washed away, shivering, panting, and Greg catches the back of his neck, pulls him close, breathes into his mouth, bites his lip, then lets him go again.

“Sorry, Poppet. . .”

He looks sad in a different way as Sherlock raises and lowers himself, scrubbing his belly and their hands with the edge of the duvet as he sinks down beside him onto one raised elbow. Sherlock strokes the tender inside of his forearm with the backs of his knuckles and Greg’s fingers curl and twitch, ticklish. A kiss to tell him it’s all right. Right as it can be. Which is all wrong, and they both know it, though they go on trying. Sherlock is still wearing his shirt—top two and bottom two buttons open, and the ones at his cuffs, but no more. Greg fingers the point of the collar, nudges his chin to ask for another kiss.

“You’re mad,” Sherlock says.

“I am,” he agrees. “I am completely mad.” He touches three fingertips to his lips, then to Sherlock’s, and Sherlock catches his hand, strokes with his thumb along the inside of Greg’s stout fingers, the same way he stroked his face. Speaking in coded words and gestures, slotting quick and tight into old habits, dismayed at and silent about the fact they no longer fit those grooves. Sherlock drops down onto the pillow and they both shift and roll until they are face to face.

“Why do you forgive me, and he won’t?”

“He might yet. Give it time.”

“I can’t.”

*

Greg couldn’t remember where he was, what he’d thought—if he’d even thought anything—when he saw John’s name come up on his phone’s screen. He might have been any way: distracted, hurried, relieved, annoyed, chuffed. He couldn’t remember if the call came to his personal mobile or his work one. He might have been alone, or there may have been people nearby, and he may have been sitting or standing or the passenger in a car. It was all just a blur—no, not even a blur. It was if nothing happened that day before that moment, though obviously he must have woken up, had his coffee, kissed them goodbye, gone to work, answered his phone for John. Funny how the mind works, erasing half his day, yet his memory of that one thing remained crystal clear months later. A year. Two.

“John, hi.”

A brittle catch of John’s breath just before he spoke, and then his voice broke in a way that Greg felt at the back of his neck.

“— _Greg?_ ”

Later, he realised he’d known before John even got to the end of his name that Sherlock was gone, but in the moment he was struck stupid, pacing, tugging at a lock of hair behind his ear, stammering disjointed half-questions that John answered all the same way: I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know. He shrugged on his coat, patted his pockets, clamped a cigarette between his teeth but forgot to light it.

“I’m coming.” He had to go to John, of course, but he also had to see. “Just wait there.”

“Yeah.” A sniff. “Greg.”

“I’m coming. Right now, I’m coming.”

Too soon, Greg was on his knees on the pavement, dragging his fingers over dark streaks, and still it made no sense. He knelt there forever or for a minute, and John stood by hugging himself.

“Why would he make you—?”

“I don’t know.”

“But.” Greg cranked back his neck to look up, straight up, and it was so, so far to the top. “How did he even. . .”

“I don’t know.”

He felt dizzy, looking up, but he let the dizziness take him, and sagged to the side, heavy on his palm. The grit grinding into the heel of his hand was the first thing he’d felt since he’d answered his phone and heard John’s shattered voice saying, “— _Greg?_ ”

He stared at a shiny patch and wanted to touch it, was too afraid to touch it. John’s fingertips pressed his shoulder. He wanted to lie down on the pavement and sleep.

“What do we do now?” he heard himself ask. John offered him a hand up and together they dragged Greg to his feet.

John shrugged a little. “Go home.”

Every object and space in the flat was defined by the absence of Sherlock. After a few hours wandering blindly from room to room, gasping for breath like drowning men, John turned on Sherlock’s laptop but they couldn’t guess the password; after ten minutes he slapped it shut and poured them each three fingers of whisky. They forgot to eat dinner, poured two more, lay side by side in bed in the dark. The silence sat on Greg’s chest and pressed hard against his throat.

“What did he say?” he ventured at last, his voice thick and estranged.

“Tomorrow,” John apologised, and rolled away, giving Greg his back.

His soundless shuddering shook the bed.

*

Only Sherlock was mad enough to suggest it—the three of them together. More than suggest it, he admitted he’d orchestrated it. Sent him out to a pub with Greg one night, and John only realised it was a date when Greg made some half-joke about how he hadn’t yet figured out Sherlock’s ulterior motive in fixing them up. A pleasant surprise, John’s attraction to Greg winning out over the slight annoyance at Sherlock’s scheming, and three days later they met for lunch. Another pub. Midmorning coffee that stretched on and made Greg late for a department meeting. At last a proper dinner, jackets and neckties and their best pairs of shoes; Greg had had his hair cut and John reveled in the scent of powdery lime at his jaw and upper lip when they ended the night snogging on the sofa in 221B.

A rude interruption, deductions, that arrogant way he made everything anyone else said or did either trivial or thanks to him—or both. Both issued idle threats of bodily harm. Half in love with Sherlock since the day they met; wanting to pursue things with Greg; and given the past eighteen months of his life were a series of unexpected dangers that made him feel necessary, dutiful, alive. . .When Sherlock opened the way for yet another ridiculous undertaking almost certain to kill them, John could not resist stepping forward into it, and somehow found Greg had beat him there by minutes—or maybe only seconds—and by the time the light of morning streamed in to warm and wake them, three in the bed, easy as that, they were hopelessly, hopefully entwined.

Of course it was a ludicrous idea and would never work. Still, it felt right. People would think they were New Age perverts. But of course, it was no one’s business, and anyway, fuck them if they thought they were entitled to an opinion about how three grown men conducted their private relationships.  It wasn’t at all what John had expected of his life. But he of all people knew all too well that it could all end tomorrow, and there was hardly time to waste—they weren’t boys anymore. It was a risk of twice the heartache, and of the loss—should it fail—of his only two friends. How was it, then, that just the idea of it felt safer than John had felt since long before he shipped off to war? They were mad. They were gorgeous. It was ridiculous and perfect and John knew it was exactly what he needed. Easy as that.


	2. Chapter 2

“I’m only answering this to ask that you not call me anymore.”

Sherlock, sitting on the back of his favourite leather armchair with his bare feet on the seat cushion, stares at the mobile phone balanced in Greg’s hand; he can feel the disruption of the air around his face as Greg flicks a questioning glance his way.

“I’m not asking anything of you, Watson, other than an hour’s time. I have things I want to say.”

“He’s there listening?”

Sherlock shrugs and nods, waving his hand to grant permission. Despite it, Greg says, “No. No, he’s—”

“John,” Sherlock intones, his voice overloud to compensate for the slight distance, though as ever, Greg is near enough to touch him. There is a crackling sound on John’s end that could be a sigh. Sherlock presses on; he is determined to fix everything that has broken between the three of them. “Your reaction was rational, if unexpected, and I realise you’re angry—”

John scoffs out loud. “Angry doesn’t begin to describe it.”

“Greg’s told me how things fell apart between the two of you. . .” Sherlock closes his eyes for much longer than a blink and his shoulders rise on a drawn-out inhalation. “One final conversation could finish things, neatly, once and for all.”

“What happened between Greg and me is none of your business, Sherlock. You gave up any claim to that when you pulled your grand fucking stunt. In fact, what happened between Greg and me is your bloody _fault_ , so live with that a while, why don’t you?”

“I suppose I deserve that,” Sherlock allows.

“That and more,” John says crisply. Greg’s flinch is visible.

“Look, Watson, I know you’ve moved on with your life,” Greg says, looking anywhere but at Sherlock, surely knowing that Sherlock’s instinct is to register a protest against John being granted permission to leave the two of them behind. “Just give me the same chance, will you? I’d like some things sorted.”

“Seems like the two of you have decided what you want; I don’t think I’m needed.”

John’s sarcasm stings. In an attempt to soothe the wound, Sherlock challenges, “You sound very emotional for someone who no longer cares.”

“ _I’m not talking to you_ ,” John fires back. “I don’t want to talk to either of you. Please don’t call me again.”

“Watson. . .”

“Frankly, Greg, I’m surprised you’re so willing to let him walk right back into your life as if he didn’t leave it a burning ruin two years ago.”

“He _needs_ to walk back into our old life. You’d understand if you’d just—”

“I can’t. I’m sorry, Greg. Sorry for you. But I just can’t. Take care of yourselves.”

He rings off.

*

John in the kitchen with his laptop, fingers thudding a heavy, rhythmic rise and fall against the tabletop at each side of the keyboard, eyes fixed on some mid-range nowhere. Greg with the dregs of their second bottle of whisky that week (he had determined this one must not be replaced), in his armchair staring at the empty fire.

John read out, “Consulting Detective Sherlock Holmes died suddenly, aged 36. He is survived by his parents and brother. He was not married.”

Greg’s eyes burned as he swallowed his last. “Go on,” he prompted.

“There’s nothing else.”

John scrubbed his hands upward from his stubble-riddled jaw to drag spread fingers backward through his hair. “I don’t want to write this.”

“Of course not,” Greg said, gently. The only feeling more hollow and hideous than his own grief was watching John, a man he fiercely loved, suffering with his. They dragged through their days, exchanged pained grimaces and attempts at sympathy—tight half-smiles, massaging each others’ shoulders, once or twice tight, swaying embraces under the flickering fluorescent light of the little kitchen—and lay awake at night, writhing and rearranging in search of comfort neither could find. It was worst near three a.m., and they clung together in a desperate, shared silence until dawn’s light crept in to let them know they’d made it through the night.

“I know we agreed to keep ourselves to ourselves,” John murmured, his face glowing and ghostly in the blue-lit glow of the laptop screen. “But now look at the two of us. We’re nothing.”

“We are _not_ nothing,” Greg protested, and lifted himself out of the chair, crossing to set his glass inside the kitchen sink. He had an inexplicable, hectic urge to smash it against the metal surface, just to see it fly apart, hear the explosive shattering.

“Far as the world knows,” John protested forcefully, sounding disgusted. Then, in a sarcastic, artificial drum-beat patter, he recited, “Sherlock Holmes, an unmarried man, leaves behind three unfinished cases, a priceless violin, seven hundred pairs of huge shoes, and two husbands.” John dropped his face into his hands, shoulders rounded in defeat. “It’s ridiculous. It’s always been ridiculous.”

Greg felt icy, then burned, outrage like lava beneath every inch of his skin.

“My life is not ridiculous.” Gritted teeth, furious. That it was John Watson saying such a thing to him, about him.

John’s face when he raised it was apologetic, and his head rocked soft on his neck, negating himself. “No,” he sighed out. “Sorry. Sorry.” He tipped the screen down until it fell the last little bit on its own, with a sound click of finality. “I just can’t be the one to write this. I’ll text his brother. Let the family do it.” Abandoning the whole horrid business of Sherlock’s unwritten, half-true obituary, John rose and stepped into Greg’s space, slid arms around his back. “I’m sorry. I’m just. . .”

“I know.”

“Off my fucking head.” He shook it again, _No_ , a habit he’d lately fallen into, about everything, sometimes about nothing at all.

“I know. Me, too,” Greg reassured. He kissed the tips of three fingers and pressed the kiss onto John’s lower lip, then patted his cheek, let his hand slip down John’s neck and dragged his thumb across the square corner of his jaw. “You need a shave.”

“ _Mm_ ,” John agreed, and dropped his forehead against Greg’s shoulder. They held each other harder. Long seconds passed, and the scent in the air gradually shifted. John turned his face to mouth at Greg’s neck just above the open collar of his shirt, and Greg’s hands slid hard down John’s back, grasped his bum and pulled him tight against his own body, urgent, grinding them against each other.

“Need you,” Greg muttered, and they kissed, fraught and open-mouthed, overbalancing each other so that Greg had to lean back against the worktop to keep them from spilling onto the floor.

“Yeah.”

“Fuck. Need you _so bad_. . .”

More deep kisses, and John’s hands dove down and then up, under Greg’s shirt to feel the skin of his belly, his back, clutching tight. “Yeah,” he said again, and gripped him at the beltline, pulling him toward the bedroom, eyes blazing dark blue but clear of tears for the first time in days. “Come on and fuck me.”

Greg allowed himself to be guided, reaching for John’s belt even as they stumbled down the little hallway and John kicked the door shut behind them. John’s chest heaved, his fingers clutched, his teeth scraped Greg’s lower lip.

“Fuck me like you fucked him,” John urged. “I want to feel it.”

“Watson. . .” Greg murmured a protest that got swallowed up in John’s kiss, then John dragged his mouth down the length of Greg’s throat. Amid mournful sounding sighs and whines of arousal, they quickly undressed, tugging at each other’s buttons and zips, hips lifting, knees and elbows banging, hot, hungry, growling. John rolled away, fetched a green plastic bottle from the bedside table and dropped it beside them on top of the still-tucked blankets.

“It’ll be good,” John promised, though something about it sounded like a threat. “Fuck me. Just the way you did him.”

Greg licked John’s nipple, sucked, wrapped fingers tight around his bicep. Nipped with his teeth, held, rocked his head side to side. John moaned out a mixture of pleasure and distress at being refused. It just wasn’t how things were done when it was just the two of them. They had their own way.

“Just close your eyes and pretend,” John demanded, a loud, ragged whisper.

“No, I don’t want to do that. I can’t. Here. C’mere.” Greg settled between John’s open thighs, slid an arm beneath his neck and kissed him, deep, possessive, a wordless acknowledgement he understood John’s impulse. “I need _you_ ,” Greg told him. “Right now, I just need you.” More desperate kisses, John’s hands behind his back, fingers digging and sliding, and in the end it was the two of them, their way: cocks slick-sliding together as Greg rocked against him, John’s legs hooked behind Greg’s thighs, Greg reaching to take them both in hand, grunted murmurations in praise of the heat between them, _need you so much, fucking need you, I need you_ , appreciative whispers about John’s hardness, the smell of him, his sounds, _you feel so good, god I need you so bad_.

John held him tight, pulled him close, urged him on, rocked up to meet him. It was hard and fast, selfish, un-gentle. It suited them. Their way, with every switch thrown open to full; when it was only the two of them, just each other to please, what pleased them was to rut and grind, rough and deep, groaning out loud, _yeah, yeah, that’s it, yeah_ , holding each other so hard they both came away with constellations of fingertip-shaped bruises. Greg longed for marks like those, reminders they would wear for days to come. Remember I needed you. Remember we were together, and alive.

After, they rolled apart and lay on their backs, side by side, letting their breath settle. Not speaking; not touching. Eventually, John patted the top of Greg’s thigh and left the bed wordlessly; Greg heard the shower taps running, the rattle of fat droplets hitting the finely-textured interior of the curtain. He dozed a bit, must have slept through John’s return, for when he woke John was untucking the quilts and sliding beneath them, dressed in fresh boxers and vest, his whole body warm, hair damp but combed neatly across his forehead and smelling of Sherlock’s shampoo. Greg rolled close, tucked his nose in behind John’s ear, kissed, hummed.

“Two widowers of the same unmarried man,” John droned, sounding resigned and disbelieving.

“We’ll be all right,” Greg reassured, though in truth he wondered.

“There’s always the gun,” John said, too plainly.

“No.” Greg tightened an arm across John’s chest, cupped his shoulder in a clenching grip. He leaned his head away to see John’s face in profile. His expression was smooth and blank. Calm. “Not that. Make me a promise, Watson.”

John turned to face him, looking skeptical.

“Just promise you won’t kill yourself. We can get through this, but only if we stay alive.”

“I don’t think I can promise that.”

“Just for tonight then. We can renegotiate tomorrow.”

Naked on top of the wreck they’d made of the quilts and coverlet, Greg realised he was shivering. His gut was a hollow of terror. Despite mention of John’s pistol, he envisioned him falling from a roof, falling and falling, while Greg stood by, made to watch as he lost all he had left of the best part of his life.

“I’ll promise, too. Can you? Just for tonight.”

“Yeah, OK,” John acquiesced, and rolled his head away again, turning his face toward the ceiling. “Not tonight.”

*

The first few weeks of their new arrangement—Sherlock’s word, one that stuck, one among many euphemisms and in-jokes they would adopt and incorporate into their special, shared vocabulary—consisted primarily of two activities. The first was a relentless discussion of terms and conditions, expectations, requirements, schedules, and definitions, interrupted only for a little bit of food and their other significant pastime: a positively heroic amount of sex. They were fairly miserable at the former, but did spectacularly well with the latter. In their twos and threes, up for anything, three male drives with the taps fully opened, libidos unleashed, given permission to try, offer, ask for anything. The flat reeked of sex and empty takeaway boxes.

They refueled with sandwiches and swigs of whisky or mugs of hot tea as they mumbled and fidgeted through their negotiations. About whether they’d be open with people out in the world (Sherlock wanted it but not enough to make a stand; John saw nothing but complication; Greg was adamant it was nobody’s goddamn business and he had no wish educate every prying idiot; they all agreed Mrs Hudson would surely know but could be counted on for discretion.). About whether the sex must always include all three (no, but everyone likes to be invited), whether the flat must include all three (Greg would keep his place so he’d have somewhere for his kids to visit, but whenever he was free, he’d stay at Baker Street), whether tea must include all three (if you’re making it anyway, don’t be a dick; make enough). About histories and health, and then they crept up to the edge of discussing preferences and boundaries but left it at _can’t we just agree that we’ll let each other know in the moment what’s working or not?_ Even skirting the borders of discussion about sex got them all going, and talks broke down at about the time Sherlock licked his lips and said slyly, “And how do we feel about fingering? With proper lubrication I can take two, straightaway.”

It was all the best bits of a new relationship—neglecting everything but each other, wanting to be together, close, every possible moment; learning each other’s habits and finding even the odd or irksome ones charming and delightful. Forgoing sleep and nourishment in favour of getting off, getting each other off, sleeping in a tangle, congratulating themselves for the genius of the thing. Cocooning together, sharing their delicious secret: that three madmen could give in to their madness and create something brilliant.

“You’re positively mad,” they laughed at each other, with wide, knowing smiles.

“I am. And so are you. And this one, too.”

They drove each other mad with pleasure, mad with gratitude, mad with joy. They were in their glory. And though they never said the words aloud, each of them knew they were threefold, madly in love.


	3. Chapter 3

“I know you don’t like it, Poppet, but you may have to accept it. He’s moved on. He’s got a girlfriend, for crissake. And he’s been pretty damn clear he’s not interested in seeing us, let alone coming back.”

“I don’t accept it. John Watson needs me. I’m here, and so should he be. The fact he hasn’t come back to us by now offends me.”

“You can’t make him do what you want; he’s a grown man entitled to his own choices. Frankly, Sherlock, I think you’re being a bit selfish here. More than a bit.”

“Of course I am. I didn’t go through two years of hell to get only half my life back.”

Greg’s face flickers misery—he is as aware as Sherlock of the unbridgeable gap between them, where John should be—but he quickly recovers.

“Maybe you should try to see it his way? His whole life up until you left, he’d always chosen to do the hard thing—the dangerous thing. Crazy things. But in the end, all it got him was no family to speak of, shot and nearly killed in a war zone, unable to do surgeries anymore because of his hand. Believing you were dead, I think he looked at his life, saw he was already halfway through it and for all his risky decisions, he had nothing to show for it.”

“He had _you_ ,” Sherlock protests.

“Having me wasn’t enough for him.”

Sherlock holds onto this idea momentarily, doesn’t like it, dismisses it.

“Maybe he’s overcorrected a bit,” Greg says thoughtfully, more to himself than to Sherlock. “Normal life, workaday job, probably headed for marriage to that woman he’s with. A dangerous life blew up in his face—nearly killed him. I worried he wouldn’t survive, well past the point when I’d realised I would—and I think he’d rather live the rest of his life settling for—”

“Numb.”

Greg half-smiles, grunting an allowance that Sherlock may be right. “ _Hmph_. Maybe. I was going to say ‘normal.’ Whatever it is—for all I know, maybe he’s happy; he says he is—I think he just doesn’t want to take a risk like he took loving us.”

“How was that a risk? It saved our lives.”

“I don’t disagree. The three of us together was another risk he ran straight at, and dove into. But it was a massive danger for him.”

“For all of us,” Sherlock corrects. “Are you saying he was more invested than we were? More devoted?”

“No, of course not. Only that he had every last one of his chips in. Because you and I had history, in the back of his mind John thought that if it ended he’d certainly be alone, but maybe we’d be together. At least as much as we were before he met you. Us.”

“He told you this?” Sherlock frowns.

“Deduced it,” Greg says, smiling so Sherlock knows he needs relief from discussion of John and his stubborn refusal to come home.

“Ah, very good,” Sherlock allows, and steps into Greg’s easy embrace, bumping his pelvis suggestively up against Greg’s hip. “I’d momentarily forgotten you’ve got such a big. . .brain.”

“Dirty bugger.” Sherlock wants to lick Greg’s smile off his face, it is so delicious.

“Take me to bed and we’ll test that hypothesis.”

“There’s my mad genius.”

An hour later, Sherlock frustrated but compassionate, Greg humiliated and furious. Greg sits on the edge of the bed with his elbows on his knees, head in his hands, and Sherlock spider-clings to his back, hands on his chest and belly, dropping kisses on the back of his shoulder.

“Is it me?” he can’t resist asking. About his new scars, though Greg has yet to see them. The fact he stays half-dressed, cannot allow Greg to get behind him, gags on his prick. That despite his every scrambling, scowling attempt to resume his life just where he left it off, Sherlock really just isn’t the same.

“No.” Greg is emphatic, shaking his head. He grabs for Sherlock’s hand and draws it up to press kisses onto his knuckles. “No, Poppet, it’s not you. You’re gorgeous. I love being with you.”

“What can I do?” He strokes fingers through the hair of Greg’s chest, spiraling and swirling, fanning fingertips across his nipple.

“Honestly?” Greg sounds pensive as he strokes Sherlock’s calf, hooked around and resting on Greg’s thigh. “Bring him home.”

*

“Fuck’s sake, can you not just. . .” John, grumbling in the lounge, rummaging around the tabletop.

“What are you looking for?” Greg demanded, testy, not so much inclined to help as to get John sorted so he’d stop radiating annoyance. He’d been snappish and broody all morning—all week, all month—and had long since stopped apologising for his churlish behaviour and dark moods, perhaps no longer seeing the point of promising to be less of an arsehole given that he never seemed to get around to it.

“Nevermind.”

John’s attitude was contagious, and in no time Greg was bashing about the kitchen, slamming drawers and cupboard doors, huffing a put-upon sigh as he leaned on the worktop, staring at the wall, waiting for the kettle to boil.

“Now, what are _you_ on about?” John gruffed at him, dropping his shoulders as if he were the most put-upon man in London.

He’d bitten it back for weeks, and without knowing why that particular late morning nine weeks after Sherlock’s funeral was different than the previous fifty mornings, Greg wheeled on him and fixed him with a pointed stare. “I think it’s time you sort yourself, Watson.”

John scoffed. “The fuck’s that supposed to mean?”

“I think you should call your therapist.”

John shrugged a bitter laugh and frowned exaggeratedly. “Fuck off.”

“I’m serious.” Greg crossed his arms over his chest, armouring himself. “You don’t sleep, you barely talk to me, and when you do you’re just angry all the time. It’s like you’re stuck. I think you could use someone to help you move along.”

John slapped his palms down on the back of the leather armchair he generally couldn’t bear to even look at. His knuckles went white as he gripped the cushion.

“Move along to what, precisely?” he asked, voice edged with condescension.

“The next thing.” Greg shrugged quick and hard, turned to pour the water over the single sachet in his own mug. “I don’t know. There are stages, right? For grieving. I don’t know what order they go in.”

“Are you actually saying this to me? You, of all people. . .christ.”

“I’m in this with you, Watson, but something’s got to give. I can’t. . .”

John started pacing the room, rolling and scrubbing his palms together, his jaw tense. “Can’t what?” he prompted, prickling with sarcasm.

“I can’t stand to see you so unhappy, for one. But I also can’t go on being the only one you take it all out on.” He grabbed a spoon out of the sink and shook it clean, or as good as, and stirred. He ventured a look at John, still circling the lounge like a shark.

“I’m sorry if my grief is inconvenient, then,” John fired at him. “I’d think _you_ would have compassion, but you’re trying to shove me off on a therapist? To start over at the beginning, explain our whole arrangement, being judged, spending hours justifying it before I even get to say, ‘and then one of my partners made me watch him commit suicide and my surviving partner finds my grief annoying.’ I can’t waste all that energy. I haven’t got it to spare.”

“But you’ve no trouble spending endless energy shouting at me,” Greg challenged. “Do you have any idea how spiky you’ve become?”

“I’m unhappy!” John shouted in protest, both balled fists raised. They settled against the creases in his forehead, then he rubbed his eyes with his knuckles. “What do you want from me, Greg, honestly.”

“Would it kill you to just love me a little?”

“What—”

“You’re not the only one struggling, Watson, for crissake. But instead of finding any comfort from you all I get is you barking and growling, stalking about the place, sulking. You come home late, you leave early, you sleep on the sofa. . .” He felt his eyes go big. “Fuck me. . .are you seeing someone?”

“What? No! Fuck, no.” He made a face that said he was disgusted with the idea, or perhaps with Greg for suggesting it. “I just.”

Greg waited, leaning against the kitchen worktop, arms crossed, tea in one hand. They never made each other’s tea anymore, never offered any. The whole fucking thing had unraveled. He set his cup aside and reached for John’s RAMC one.

“I hate being here,” John admitted, at last, in a softer tone of voice. “It’s hard to be here. I can’t bear to look at his empty chair. Or his suits in the wardrobe. I can’t even look in the bathroom mirror—all those mornings fighting for it. And lying in that bed at night is sheer torture. At least on the sofa I get a little sleep. I can’t get a minute of it in bed.”

“I get it,” Greg assured, and went through the motions of fixing John’s tea. “It’s not easy for me, either, Watson; don’t ever think it’s easy for me.”

“No, I know.”

John moved to the kitchen, dragged his chair back from the table and sank into it. Greg lifted both mugs off the worktop and set them in place. John rested his hand over the back of Greg’s as he withdrew, just for a few seconds, but it helped.

“Look. I know I’ve been hard to live with. I don’t like the way I’ve been acting. I don’t like the way I’ve treated you recently. I think about it, but it’s like you say—I’m stuck. I’m not angry at you, Greg; of course I’m not angry at you. I’m probably still angry at Sherlock.”

“Me, too.”

“I know it doesn’t help anything. But it’s easy.”

“Yeah.”

“One thing I’ve thought about. . .” John sat forward, dragged the tip of his finger in curlicues around the slick-dry surface of the tabletop. “We spent a lot of time worrying about who might find out, and what if, and what people might say, or think about it. About us. Like, what if one of your subordinates figured it out? What about Sherlock’s mum? His brother, your kids. . .but somehow. We never.” He shook his head, grimaced. “Any one of us could have easily died, just about any time we walked out the door. But we never worried about what to say to each other if one of us actually did. So now I find that I just don’t know what to say to you.”

“Tell me I’m driving you mad,” Greg said simply, and offered a smile John managed to return part of.

Instead of replying in kind, half-joking about how utterly mad Greg had driven him, though, John told him, “I love you too much to unload this onto you.” His voice was sturdy but soft. It was the first time he’d ever used the phrase the three of them had talked their way around for the nearly two years they’d been together. “You have your own.”

“I love you the same way.”

John sighed and squeezed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and two fingers.

“I don’t know how to do this,” he said hopelessly. “Just us two. It was always the three of us—even before it was the three of us, it was. You know.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s how we designed it, to find our balance. You and me are just a two-legged stool. I can’t help thinking we were always meant to be three. Because that’s what made it enough.” He went on, staring into his cup. “I’m just not enough for you, and you’re—”

“Stop,” Greg interrupted. “Just stop. I can’t hear that. Can’t hear that now. From you.” He found his feet, his chair scraping carelessly away behind him. “It’ll work if we let it.” He fetched his coat off the hall tree, shrugged into it and patted its pockets for keys and cigarettes, then his trousers for his mobile. “I’m going out and get pissed. Do me a favour and think about at least starting the night in bed with me tonight.” He flicked a smoke from the packet and set it between his teeth. “At least let me think you’re willing to try, all right, Watson? I need you to try.”

As he pulled shut the door to the landing, he heard John’s plaintive, automatic, “Come home.”

*

The three of them all trying to get ready to leave the flat at the same time. Three men in need of showers; there were never enough dry bath towels. One bathroom mirror but three faces to be shaved (Greg would sometimes let the stubble go for a few days until Sherlock complained of whisker-burned lips and chin; John could sometimes get by shaving in the shower but would inevitably miss a spot he’d be scratching at, all day). Sherlock in the long wardrobe-door mirror  _forever_ , when all Greg needed was to check his necktie was straight and his fly zipped, for crissakes, you posh princess, move your skinny arse and let a man have a minute!

Someone was always short one shoe—under the sofa? under the bed? out on the landing?—one of the umbrellas was always broken, John always had toast hanging out of his mouth as he cursed the clock and tugged on his jacket; Greg leaning in and biting off most of it, throwing John a cheeky grin as he chewed. Greg would later buy them go-cups of coffee because he knew when Sherlock got it, he’d always throw his small change in the gutter and neither wanted to hear John lecture him about that shocking behaviour all the way to Charing Cross.

Pockets were checked and double-checked for keys and phones and wallets, Sherlock tapped his long, Italian-leather-clad foot as he stood impatient by the door, and then quick kisses were exchanged three ways, each issuing the same order to each:  _Come home_.

Do anything at all—run the streets, wear dodgy disguises, mix volatile compounds, fight the baddies—but when it’s all over, come home.


	4. Chapter 4

“Nope. No.”

“John, please.”

Sherlock had been leaning against the wall of John’s clinic for ten minutes, knowing it was the end of his shift, that he always met his girlfriend at their local on Friday nights but that he had at least a half-hour to kill before she arrived because her journey from her finance job was longer, that he would order a pint of lager to sip at while he waited for her. That she offered him her cheek to kiss and carried her high heeled shoes in her bag. John loved women in high-heeled shoes.

John had been marching up the pavement, resolutely not looking back at him as Sherlock strode along behind him, but now he wheels on Sherlock, eyes flashing a dark warning.

“Stop. I don’t want to speak to you. I don’t want to see you. I sure as hell am not going to have you hanging about when Eva gets here.”

“She doesn’t know about me?”

“Fuck off, everyone knows about you.”

“About you and me.”

“Swear to christ, Sherlock, if you don’t leave right now I will punch you again, and I can’t promise I’ll stop at one.”

John is near-boiling with rage, but he is not walking away.

“How does it serve you to be so angry at me? Everything I did was for you and Greg.”

“So you keep saying. Don’t forget Mrs Hudson.” John stepped close, puffed up and tight-wound; Sherlock didn’t move back, but he drew himself upright, only his chin tilted down. John still refused to look at him, instead pointing at the ground while talking to Sherlock’s chest through gritted teeth. “You left. You didn’t tell us anything. You let us think you were dead. I know it’s not your strong suit, understanding other people’s feelings, but I assure you, Sherlock—anger serves me absolutely perfectly, under those terms.”

“I was protecting you,” Sherlock defends.

“You broke my heart!” John suddenly shouts, throwing his arms up and shaking open hands at the sky. Startled, dumbstruck, Sherlock steps backward. He blinks.

John leans in, pointing, menacing, his face a riot of fury and pain. “You died. And we grieved. And it broke us apart. I did.” Points at himself. “I did.” Sniffs, and his nose is going red around the edges. “Got on with my life, made my peace. As you do, even when you lose someone you were _mad_ about. I moved on. I was _fine_.”

It sounds like a curse. Sherlock’s chest is tight and weighted, filled with bits of broken brick, and he is choking on the dust.

“And then you came back. And it changed everything I thought I knew about you. Us. Because you didn’t trust us. Left us. Left us to die, Sherlock, that’s what you did. I thought I knew you, and then you came back and I realise I never did. What a fool I was.” He shakes his head; he is still pointing hard at Sherlock’s chest and still will not look him in the eye. “I’d have jumped. For you. And what did you do for me? And him?”

The moment stretches on. Weak and wobbling, Sherlock at last says, “Jumped.”

“A magic trick,” John says scornfully, and drops his pointing hand into a loose fist beside his hip. He tugs at the neck of his coat. His tone is icy, and he finally meets Sherlock’s gaze. “It was cheap. I thought you were worth more.” Frowning hard, he shakes his head, _No_.

While he has John’s eyes on his, Sherlock leaps: “Forgive me.”

John shuts his eyes, and his mouth crumples, smiling, not smiling. His head goes on swaying side to side.

“John.”

“ _Shh_.” Both hands in front of his chest, protecting himself, waving Sherlock away, as John steps back and turns to go.

“Greg needs you.”

“Nope.”

“You’re not normal, John Watson, and you never will be. It doesn’t suit you.”

John shoots a sharp wave over his shoulder, but does not reply, and keeps walking away.

*

John had tried for a while to be kinder, closer, more open, but quickly collapsed back into his habits of silent withdrawal and angry muttering. Greg spent more time at his old place, even when he didn’t have his kids there with him. Being somewhere Sherlock had rarely been—where the three of them had never been together—made it easier somehow. John barely noticed; he spent his own share of time away from 221B Baker Street, though Greg wasn’t sure where he was spending his time. John was starting to put out feelers about a regular job; his savings was drying up and Sherlock hadn’t made arrangements for dispensation of his, so all he had was all he had. Greg got more hands-on with some of his department’s cases, just for something to focus on. He could see it was irking his team, but his supervisor was pleased. They made a point, though, to spend Friday nights together at the flat.

“What was that film we watched—remember the heat was out—we were all wrapped up in the duvets, Sherlock kept putting his cold feet on us?”

John grinned. “ _Bringing Up Baby_ , I think.”

“Oh, right.”

“You should show it to your kids,” John suggested.

“Maybe. Dunno if they’d sit still for a black-and-white film. They’re more into robots fighting monsters, edited like a music video.”

“Yeah, they probably would be, I suppose. How are they?” John started clearing away the dishes; he’d heated up tinned soup and made cheese toasties; Greg was pacing himself with the cider.

“Good. Michael’s going out for rugby, did I tell you?”

“Fella his size, he’ll be murder. Good luck to him.”

“Jane wants to get her ears pierced.”

John grimaced theatrically. “And what do we think of that?”

“They grow up too fast.” Greg was grateful for John’s hand on his shoulder, not exactly romantic, but at least friendly. He rested his own hand on top of it, waited for John to kiss the top of his head. Instead, John moved on to the sink, set the last of the dishes inside it. He turned on the taps and started half-heartedly rinsing some. “Oi, just leave it,” Greg told him. “It’ll still be there in the morning.”

John carried on, though he seemed to be thinking it over. “Yeah, all right. Twist my arm.” He dried his hands on a nearby kitchen towel he tossed on the worktop. “Shall we watch something, maybe?” he offered, glancing toward the lounge. There was a flood of something beneath Greg’s skin, cascading down his back. Relief.

“Yeah, why not.”

A half hour later they were watching a repeat of some old, funny thing they’d both watched before, lightly chuckling now and then. They were in their armchairs—John had angled his away from Sherlock’s empty one, ostensibly for a better view of the television—with their sock-clad feet sharing the same footstool. Greg reached for John’s hand and John let him take it; he rubbed his thumb in light, ticklish spirals against John’s palm.

“This one in the black suit is like Sherlock through the looking glass,” Greg commented, and gestured.

“He is, a bit,” John agreed.

After a few minutes, the programme ended and John fidgeted with the remote. Greg traced his delicate fingers one by one. “We could ask Mrs Hudson if we can move his chair. Downstairs, maybe,” Greg ventured. “I know you don’t like looking at it.”

“No,” John replied, softly, and Greg wasn’t sure if he was negating the suggestion it be removed, or confirming his reluctance to turn his gaze.

“I still see him everywhere,” Greg admitted. “Standing by that window with his fiddle. At the microscope there at the table. Saw one of my coppers out of the corner of my eye the other day—she had on this long, black coat—”

“Yeah,” John said, and withdrew his hand on the pretense of scratching the back of his neck.

“When I look at you, I see him, and it feels a bit better,” Greg said, faintly smiling around it.

John sighed, and turned his face toward Greg. “I look at you and I see him, too. Falling.” He sucked and bit his lips, struggling to school his expression.

“I’m sorry you had to,” Greg told him, as he’d told him dozens of times since that awful day. “He shouldn’t have made you.”

“It should have been you,” John said then, but didn’t clarify his meaning.

“I wish it had been,” Greg told him. He’d have given anything to have been there, in John’s place, to save John that pain.

John clicked off the television set and drew his limbs closer to himself.

“You couldn’t have stopped him, either, you know,” John murmured, and it could have been meant to comfort Greg, but it felt like he was sniping. Condescending.

Greg exhaled hard. He’d wondered. Of course he had. And it wasn’t that he blamed John. But perhaps he did, just a bit. And though every time the thought bubbled up to the surface of his mind, he shoved it back under in an attempt to drown it, he was something like jealous that John had got those last moments hearing his voice, got a goodbye. Greg had got a corner-of-the-mouth kiss and an order to come home, and later John’s broken voice in his ear.

_“—Greg?"_

It wasn’t fair of him to be envious that John had been Sherlock’s witness, and it wasn’t fair that Sherlock had allowed just one of them to be. It wasn’t fair that Sherlock was gone and the two of them were left alone with grief growing like fire between them, pushing them apart, making them turn their faces away, smothering them in smoke so they could barely see each other anymore. And it wasn’t fair the way John held onto those last moments like a talisman of his deeper suffering. Sherlock had belonged to both of them, and had left both of them. John’s _You couldn’t have stopped him_ stung. Because neither of them knew if it was true. Because Greg hadn’t been given the chance to try.

“Probably not,” Greg allowed, only because he didn’t want to argue and ruin the pleasant hour they’d just spent—their first in weeks. He hated the black roil in his gut that made him want to say he could have. He could have stopped him. Saved him. That John had failed him by failing to stop Sherlock from that awful thing he’d done to the three of them.

John looked at him, hard, for a long moment, then said, “Greg. . .” and Greg could feel in his gut as surely as he’d felt that Sherlock was gone when he heard John say his name on the phone that day, what was going to come next. He’d known in his heart it was coming—was inevitable—but when the moment arrived, he found he couldn’t bear it.

“Come to bed, Watson,” he commanded, with finality, and got to his feet. He gave John a steady look, then turned and crossed the kitchen toward the bedroom. He was half-undressed and beginning to doubt John would follow when at last he heard lamps clicking off in the lounge, then the weird absence of the fluorescent buzz in the kitchen, and the vague sounds of John in the bath: splashing, spitting, the rattle of the plastic towel bar. Greg watched him undress in the light leaking in from the half-shut door to the bath, admiring the deeply-shadowed curves and angles of his sturdy shoulders and the flex of his quadriceps muscles. He raised the bed covers with one arm to welcome John in beside him, and they settled into a loose embrace. John’s mouth when they kissed tasted minty and sterile, but opened for him, and John pressed his tongue into Greg’s mouth, and he made a needy noise behind his nose as his hand slid light and sweet down the length of Greg’s arm, then settled on his hip, curving and smoothing.

Greg could barely make out the features of John’s backlit face, his eyes reduced to glinting hollows beneath the ridge of his brow. He thrust his knee between John’s, held the nape of his neck to draw him closer, kissed him again, more, missing him even as they lay naked together, heat rising between them, breathing in synchronous time. They reached for each other, teasing, gasping, then the momentary fumble as Greg leaned away, came back, slicked their palms, sliding them together to warm the minty-smelling slip.

“ _Mmm_. . .you gorgeous madman,” Greg sighed out, and caught John’s lower lip between his teeth, then sucked, and they resumed stroking each other with deep groans, their foreheads touching. John hummed a bit, and then his breath huffed out against Greg’s chin. They rocked against each other’s fingers, slippery palms, rough-paced and urgent almost from the first, and their sounds deepened and shortened, shout-whispering, _yeah_ , grunting, _that’s it, yeah_.

“Let go,” John whispered. Not their way. Soft. “Let go.” A plea.

Greg quick-kissed his jaw, and John lifted himself onto his elbow and shifted forward, adjusting both their angles. Greg was thrumming hot, thrusting into the ring of John’s hand, skin shifting deliciously. He let out a low moan, and it sounded strange in his own ears. Mournful. He gave his wrist a twist as he drew down John’s length, and was gratified at the shuddering sigh he got in response.

“Just let it go.” John loomed above him, and the light seeped in below his face, masquing him in bluish dim. His eyes were wide open. “Let go.”

They knew exactly what to do, and John’s movements were expert, so sweet, and Greg was burning beneath John’s fingertips, heat melting into a pool low in his pelvis, and his own hand stilled, distracted by his own pleasure nearing its point of perfection. “Let it go,” John urged, words and meaning at war in the tone of his voice.

Greg clutched his shoulder. “No.” He shook his head, then rolled it back and around, eyes drifting up beneath fluttering lids, and again gasped out, louder, “No.”

“ _Shh_. . .” John dipped to kiss him, just beneath his eye, then rose away again, and his fingers rolled a turn that nearly did Greg in, then rolled again, definitively more promise than tease. “Let go. . .”

“I can’t.”

“ _Please_ ,” John begged in a thick whisper. “ _Mmm_. . _._ please. . .let it go.”

Greg remembered himself, slid the ring of his fingers to find John flagging, only half-hard, beneath his touch.

“Nevermind, let go.”

“Watson. . .”

“ _Shh_.” John’s face in the quarter-light, suddenly serene, with a familiar old kindness softening his eyes and the set of his mouth. “Just. . . _mmm_. . .let go, Greg, please.”

Greg’s eyes dropped shut and despite his wish to hold out, the heat in his belly began to unfurl, rumbling through him like low thunder, filling up his torso and limbs, feet flexing, mouth open. Groaning. The pit of his chest, though, aching. He panted hard, again, _again_ , and John looked soft and satisfied—but not sated—and lowered himself onto the pillow, kissed Greg’s temple, again, and then again.

Desperate to reassemble what he had just allowed to shatter, Greg pressed John flat, scuttled down the mattress to settle between the golden-fuzzed thighs, wetted his lips, flattened his tongue, hummed, moaned, and he leaned into John’s hips when at last they began to roll. John said his name, again, _again_ , and rested his precious fingers in Greg’s hair, gently scratching and spreading. Their way—greedy, ungentle, without apology—Greg brought him along, took him deep, got him off, his chin a mess of spit and spunk, bitter tongue and raw throat and beautifully aching jaw. John’s thigh fell away from his shoulder and Greg withdrew, rubbed his face against the mattress, swallowed hard as he moved back up the bed.

John kissed his salt-sour mouth, deep and desperate, forever, and Greg held John’s face in his hands and begged him without words. John’s hands against his chest. John’s toes stroking his calf. The heat dissipating until they were littering soft kisses here and there, on chins and cheeks and closing eyes. Then there was business to attend to, a ritual to observe.

“Promise me you won’t kill yourself.”

“Not tonight.”

“I promise, too.”

John moved out in the morning.

*

Not often, but every now and then, Greg and Sherlock would indulge in some minor (or not so minor; sometimes they _giggled_ ) reminiscence of their earlier affair—better left in the past, it was so messy, not a mistake really but still better to leave it alone of course—and John’s gut would flare with jealousy that the two shared a history with each other he would never have with either of them. As soon as it was convenient (or not actually terribly convenient, but necessary to John’s continued contentment), he would remind them how much better it was now that it was the three of them: grown men who knew themselves, no one cheating on his wife, no one on the nod, you know it’s better now, so much better now. C’mere you, and you as well—where’d’you think _you’re_ going, c’mere and let me—mm, _this_ —you there, you there, closer now I’m not a contortionist, here now give us a kiss, you’re so gorgeous. Lucky me. Lucky you. Aw don’t be greedy, now, my darling—enough for everyone—lovely, that’s it, lovely. All right? Yeah? God. _Christ._ Yeah. Yeah. Perfect you. And you as well. Yeah. That’s lovely, yeah? Mm, c’mere.


	5. Chapter 5

Greg has somehow tricked John back to 221B, though of course he would not have come if he were anything like as resolute as he tells himself he is. Greg has poured them whisky with a little water because they have no ice for it. John refuses to sit in his old armchair, still with its same pillow he liked tucked behind his back while he read the newspaper Sunday mornings, with his sock-clad feet on the stool rubbing mindlessly up against Sherlock’s bare ankle, or the edge of Greg’s slipper. Instead he has taken up position in front of the window, beside the wide table with its riot of file folders, musty books, magazines, old mail, and two pairs of Greg’s reading glasses. He slowly swirls his glass and looks out the window, down to the street below.

“Everything’s the same,” he offers, gesturing, gaze fixed on the tabletop. “Same old tip.”

“Mrs Hudson didn’t let it out after,” Greg says, and what happened to cause there to be an “after” is left hanging: after Sherlock died, after John left, after Greg told her he wouldn’t be coming around anymore but she should always feel free to ring him if she needed anything, anything at all. “All that’s changed is the food in the fridge.”

John fakes a small grin, his head drifting back, shoulders rising.

Greg has been standing dumbly nearby, not wanting to sit while John stands. Sherlock is in the bedroom behind a closed door.

“He’s here, isn’t he?” John asks suddenly, some accusation in it.

“Yeah.”

“Will he join us?” John raises his glass, then tips it and takes a larger-than-normal pull off it. He grimaces appreciation, baring his teeth.

“Do you want him to?”

John looks thoughtfully out the window again, nudging the drapes aside with the back of his wrist. After a moment he says, “Not yet.”

“As you like,” Greg agrees, his voice low. “Let’s sit.”

“Sure. Thanks.” John, thus activated, marches to his chair and settles into it with a quick, grateful hum. He shuffles the pillow behind his back, rests his glass on the arm of the chair cupped loosely in the circle of his hand. “Don’t know why this is weird,” he says. “But it is.”

Greg hums assent as he settles himself. John’s ankles are crossed, his feet on the floor half-under the footstool. Greg sits wide-kneed, leaning forward with one elbow on his thigh. “You’re all right,” he dismisses, smiling. “It’s good to see you.”

“Yeah.” John finally ventures to look him in the eyes. “You, too.”

“How’s Eva?”

“Uh, good.” John clears his throat, a sign of his discomfort. Greg lets it drop. “Kids are well?”

“Very well, yeah. Thanks for asking.” John nods, does that thing with his mouth. Greg sets his own glass aside on the low side table, and shifts in his seat, a bit closer to John. He lowers his voice. “Listen, there are some things you should know. About him. Before you decide.”

John scoffs. “Decide? I’ve nothing to decide.” He tilts his head, curls his lip. “ _Greg_.” The rest, _come_ _on now_ , is left unsaid.

“I know. I know,” Greg surrenders, showing his palms. “I was furious, too. For a bit. But there’s a lot more to it than you know. You might. . .” He bit it back.

“I can’t imagine what you could say that would change my mind. Nor him.” John tosses his head sideways, indicating he has deduced Sherlock is in the bedroom. He sniffs and frowns, looking chagrined. “And him aside. . .” Clears his throat again. “You and I. No one would blame you never forgiving me for walking away. I was. . .”

“Nevermind.”

“. . .so selfish. _So_ selfish.”

“Watson.”

John—squirming his discomfort, ashamed of his bad behaviour—finally meets his gaze again, and Greg’s eyes are soft and kind.

“God! You. . .” John shakes his head.

“You and I were just the same,” Greg tells him, and for a half-second rests his hand on John’s knee before lifting it away again. “I get it. I’m the only one that does.”

“I’m sorry it didn’t work. That I couldn’t stick it out.”

Greg’s voice is quieter than ever, gentle as if they were together in the dark: “You’re all right.”

“Thanks,” John replies, barely above a whisper. The sun has dropped behind the roofs of Baker Street and the room is shifting from the glow of late afternoon to the gloom of early evening.

“I’ll take you back quick as I did him, you know,” Greg tells him, nakedly vulnerable but clearly unafraid. “We were each of us completely fucked up by him leaving,” he says, perfectly himself in his ability to spew curses even as he described one of his very deepest emotional experiences. “I’ve never blamed you or held any grudge.”

John clears his throat, less vigorously, and makes major moves in his seat, as if he wants to get up out of it. Once he has resettled, he downs the last of his whisky and sets the glass on the table beside Greg’s, which still has a few swallows in it. “I don’t know what to say to that,” he admits. “Just thanks, I suppose.”

“Just thought you should know.”

“Yeah. No. Thanks. It’s. . .that’s nice to hear. It’s a relief.”

“Good.” Greg reaches out and brushes his palm across the nubby, corduroy surface of the footstool, brushing away dust or a bit of fluff. “He spent all that time he was gone dismantling the larger part of Moriarty’s international network. Travel, disguises, tangles with second-world police, hand-to-hand combat with Balkan assassins. . .all his favourite things.”

John can’t help but chuckle, more at Greg’s wit than Sherlock’s penchant for outlandish behaviour.

“He untangled a huge part of that web; Moriarty will be stitching it up for years to make it anything like it was.”

“Good, then,” John allows.

“But something awful happened,” Greg says, his expression turning dour, deep lines appearing beside his mouth. “About ten months before his brother went and got him.”

The story he unspools is hideous, and John lets out a few pained sounds along the way, and even if it hadn’t been Sherlock kidnapped, shackled, run down by dogs, and on and on. . .it’s a horror. To think of Sherlock—their Sherlock, their mad genius, whose every freckled inch of skin they knew, every black-auburn hair, every sigh, every soft and hard-won genuine smile—bent-backed and broken and starved and whipped. By the end, John was wiping his eyes on the cuffs of his shirtsleeves.

“He won’t let me see him,” Greg finishes, sitting back in his chair but keeping his voice low.

“How’dya mean?” John sniffs.

“He keeps his shirt on.”

“Aw, christ,” John huffs, and drags his hand across his mouth. He has reassembled himself, but the air in the room is different. He inhales forever, sighs it out hard through his nostrils, and rubs his hands up and down his thighs, draining energy. The heels of his hands press hard against his eyes. “Aw, _christ_!” he says again, in a different tone, frustrated, despairing.

“I’ll pour us another,” Greg says.

“No,” John protests, still with his hands pressed hard against his face. “Don’t bother. I. . .” He growls. “Fuck, I don’t know. I don’t know what to do with this.”

“I know.”

“I want to kill someone.”

“I know,” Greg agrees readily.

John’s hands finally drop away from his face. “Still him, a bit,” he admits, and Greg half-grins. “And for damn sure anyone who hurt him.”

Greg is still crawling on thin ice, but he can see the shore from where he is, and John is no longer stomping all around him, threatening to smash and sink the whole thing.

“Another thing, Watson,” he says after a moment, his tone indicating a shift in the topic to something less charged, but still significant. He leans closer than ever, even beckons John to meet him in the middle. “I can’t keep a hard-on. Since he’s been back, I can’t. . .on my own I’m OK but with him I’m useless.”

John’s eyes widen, then narrow. The tension in the air proves too tempting not to puncture, so he ventures, “I can prescribe something for that.”

“Fuck off, I’m being serious.” Greg’s grin gives away that he’s not actually angry. “He’s gorgeous, of course, undressed, half-dressed, whatever. But.”

John’s eyebrows rise, prompting him to go on.

“I feel like I’m fucking your husband behind your back,” Greg says, finally, and sits back, leaning away from the confession. “It’s not meant to be just two of us. Like it couldn’t go on when it was just you and me.”

“That’s mad,” John says, his face skeptical.

Greg shrugs, his arms widening, palms up.

“Fuck him all you like,” John says. “He’s not my. . .Not mine anymore.”

“Don’t take the piss,” Greg urges him.

“I’m not taking the piss,” John protests, and now he’s getting riled again, straightening his spine, tightening his jaw. “None of this changes the fact he didn’t trust us enough to tell us he was alive.” His voice is rising, now, and he doesn’t care if Sherlock hears. Maybe wants him to hear. “Not a single word from him in two years, while our lives fell apart.” The bedroom door clicks open and Sherlock’s ankle cracks and snaps as he covers the distance. He is dressed in a grey suit, single jacket button done up, silvery-pale shirt open at the neck, bare feet. He slides into his own chair, crosses one knee over the other. John still cannot bring himself to look, instead staring at Greg as he finishes. “It doesn’t change the fact you and I had to promise each other we wouldn’t commit suicide. Every night. For four months.”

Sherlock inhales, sharp but quiet. John turns on him, and none of them expected him to, none is ready for John’s gaze fixed on Sherlock’s green-blue eyes, which are wide open and impossibly soft like a beaten dog’s.

“Didn’t he tell you that?” John demands.

Greg lays a hand on John’s arm. “He doesn’t need to hear it all, all at once,” Greg half-explains.

“You have to hear about all he survived, but he’s spared everything we barely did?” John’s fist pounds the arm of the chair—just once, and it’s clear he’s pulled the punch, restraining himself. “How is that fair? Why is he more fragile than you?”

“It’s not that,” Greg starts to protest. “It’s only that—”

Sherlock interrupts, “I think we’re all the same, actually.”

“What? Three hard men?” John scoffs.

“We’re all equally fragile,” Sherlock says. “I wish he had told me that, actually.” He turns his gaze on Greg, though there’s no real challenge in it. “Why didn’t you?”

“Hurts to think about. Let alone say it. And anyway, we got on with it, in the end.” Greg shrugs, more resigned than defeated. “And it’s already forgiven.”

“John disagrees,” Sherlock asserts, and his face turns again.

“It’s not that I don’t forgive you, Sherlock,” John says, but there’s no softness in it. “But that doesn’t mean I want to see you. Or. Be with you.” He flicks a glance at Greg: both of you.

“Your presence here tonight would seem to put a lie to that assertion,” Sherlock replies.

“I’m here for Greg.”

“Good. He needs you.”

“Not like that,” John says, with a definitive shake of his head. Sherlock tilts his head, eyes narrowed. “Stop,” John demands, and Sherlock’s eyebrows rise in surrender, his head moving back to center. “The last thing I need is you in my head, and then sitting there telling me what I’m thinking before I’ve finished thinking it.”

“I like being in your head,” Sherlock tells him. “I spent half my captivity there.”

Despite the fact Sherlock’s tone is off-the-cuff, merely matter-of-fact, John looks like he’s taken an unexpected body blow.

“Why is it the last thing you need?” Sherlock asks.

“Oi, lay off a bit, will you,” Greg gently implores.

“I don’t want my mind changed—if I change my mind—because you tell me it’s changed. I can’t spend more of my days feeling like everything I do is because you said so. Because of what you want, and that way you dismiss difficult things as _obvious_ , or _too boring_ for you to be bothered about. I swear to god if you tell me what I’m feeling about all this, or what decisions I’m going to take tomorrow, or next week, or a month from now, it will only serve to shove me right out that door.” John jabs his finger in the direction of the landing.

“It’s fine,” Greg soothes. “It’s a lot, of course. Just.” He slides forward to the edge of his seat and sets his gaze on John. “It works better when it’s all three of us. Like you said once, about the way we designed it in the first place, and the two-legged stool.”

Sherlock looks confounded. Greg slaps the top of their used-to-be-shared footstool.

“It has _four_ legs,” Sherlock intones.

“No one said anything about a fourth,” John protests, sardonic, firing a sideways, half-smiling glance at Greg. “That I _know_ I couldn’t manage.”

Greg barks out a single, coarse, “Ha!” and John giggles a little, under his breath. Sherlock drifts between looking perplexed and annoyed.

“Answer me this, Sherlock,” John says then, his tone turning serious once more. “Did you plan to be gone two years?” John is looking at his own fingers, picking and scratching at a frayed bit of fabric on the arm of his chair.

“No. Nowhere near.”

“What happened to the people who—” John clears his throat gustily, making space for heavy words. “—captured you. Hurt you.”

“All dead.”

“ _Mm_. Too bad.” John sounds equal parts regretful and ominous. There is a little thrill in the air all three of them respond to with rising hair, flaring nostrils, and tightening jaws. A long silence follows, in which each of them fidgets. John goes on watching his fingers. Sherlock studies the creases of John’s forehead; he has set his feet on the floor and his toes flex and relax against the carpet. Greg can see the very edge of a fine-lined pink mark at the side of Sherlock’s neck, beneath his open shirt collar, and he drags his hand backward over recently close-cropped hair.

The time stretches out, growing more and more taut, until it feels certain to snap.

“I won’t be going home tonight, I don’t think,” John says at last. His face frank and open, he passes his glance from Sherlock to Greg and back again. Greg’s face lights up with a smile, all the best lines in his face appearing—the asterisks beside his eyes, the narrow slashes that emphasize his mouth—and he raises his eyebrows, questioning. John nods. Sherlock blinks, and sinks backward a bit in his chair.

“You know,” Greg says, rising. “I’ll give you two a few minutes.” He motions toward the bath and leaves them. Once the door clicks shut, John clears his throat, and he nudges one leg of the footstool with the toe of his shoe, pushing it a few inches toward Sherlock.

“You,” he says quietly. “C’mere.” Sherlock does not hesitate, slides himself from his chair to sit on the stool, gangly knees too high, hands folded prayerfully and tucked beneath his chin, then pressed to his lips as he tilts his head down, then under his chin again as he meets John’s eyes. “Now you can say it,” John murmurs, and edges up toward Sherlock, shifting his own knees out of the way.

“What?”

“Tell me what’s in my head.” John’s dark blue eyes are soft and clear, and they slide back and forth as he studies Sherlock’s face.

“That woman you’ve been with is funny and kind—and very pretty—and you like her but don’t love her.”

“All right,” John acquiesces, as if Sherlock has given him an order rather than rattled off a deduction. He brushes one fingertip against the shoulder of Sherlock’s suit jacket.

“You’re worried I’m experiencing post-traumatic anxiety.”

“Yes.”

“I am. I’ve an appointment with a psychiatrist Thursday week.”

“That’s. . .” John ventures to pluck at one waved lock of Sherlock’s hair, just in front of his ear, rolling it between finger and thumb. “Yeah, that’s good. Good.” Sherlock drops his hands to dangle, still finger-tangled, between his splayed knees.

“You. . .” Sherlock begins, but John is closing in on him, slides his careful hands along the sides of Sherlock’s throat, up to his jaw, fingers curling just so against the base of his skull.

“I. . .?” John prompts, and licks his lips. He smiles softly, eyes brighter than ever now, and gently tilts and pulls Sherlock’s head to where he wants it. Sherlock wants to close his eyes, can’t stop looking _. John_.

“You. . .” it’s a whisper, barely any voice in it, and it trails, leaving Sherlock’s lips in a soft, just-open “o”. He closes his eyes.

“I’m still angry.”

Sherlock nods.

“Why do you insist on driving me absolutely mad?” John sounds amused, edge of exasperated, but Sherlock knows he isn’t meant to reply, only to accept John’s kiss, which alights tender on his lips, almost hesitant, but in an instant they remember precisely how they fit together, and it deepens, sweet and hot and salted with bitter tears. John sighs against Sherlock’s lips, licks them, nips with his teeth as if to claim him with an idle threat of harm. Sherlock’s hands have found their way onto John’s knees, slide up the tops of his thighs until they are force-stopped by his hipbones, and Sherlock digs his fingers in.

“I apologise,” Sherlock whispers, and resumes their kiss, and John nods just a little, strokes his neck affectionately with the flats of his fingers.

They cycle through tenderness, heat, recrimination and forgiveness, and Sherlock creeps closer, as close as he can get, hands wrapping around John’s middle back, and John shifts his knees out of the way to make space. The kiss deepens and warms, tiny noises escaping into the air around their faces. Sherlock’s sometimes dismayed, John’s mostly delighted.

“Hate to interrupt,” Greg says then, standing nearby. He looks pleased and proud, and as John and Sherlock come partway apart, they each reach a hand to him, lift themselves to stand and their arms go around each other’s waists and backs, and Sherlock rests his head on Greg’s shoulder as John gives him a familiar, knowing smile. “Here, Watson,” Greg encourages—demands—and John obeys, kissing him hello, I’ve missed you, I’m sorry, forgive me. Greg’s hand strokes Sherlock’s hair and the side of his neck as he rests against Greg’s shoulder, and John kneads Sherlock’s arm just above the elbow, drags his hand down Sherlock’s forearm to tangle their fingers together.

John and Greg end their kiss in a trailing flurry, and Sherlock mouths at Greg’s throat, and everything is sweet and gentle and then quickly catches fire.

*

They met once more after John moved out, accidentally, at Sherlock’s grave.

It was the week of the anniversary, neither the day he died nor the day they buried him, and Greg had assumed he’d be alone there on a weekday at two in the afternoon; he’d left work early to fetch his kids from school. John was already standing by the glossy black stone when Greg rounded the bend in the path, and he supposed he could have just left and come again later. The next day. A proper anniversary. But then John’s straight, sturdy shoulders had sunk, and his head fallen forward as he lifted his hand to meet it, and Greg had only walked faster.

He hadn’t anything to leave—no flowers, no letter to be set upon the monument and weighted down with a stone, passing time until the rain soaked and smudged it and broke it into pulp—and he kept his hands in his coat pockets.

“Hey,” he said, when he was about five yards out, to give John time to wipe his eyes if he needed to. “Only me,” he added, when he saw John start at the sound of his voice. John did, in fact, drag his fingertips in quick flicks beneath his eyes, and he sniffed and shook his head, but he’d gathered himself by the time Greg landed at his side, leaving plenty of space between them. There was a small pot at the foot of the gravestone, glazed golden yellow, full of miniature cacti. “You brought that?” Greg asked, motioning with his hand still inside the pocket of his coat.

“Yeah,” John said. “Reminded me of him.”

“Bit spiky.”

“Tall and thin and sort of—dunno—dry?” John said. They both chuckled, just a bit, under their breath.

“That was him, all right,” Greg grinned. Then he shrugged, looking chagrined. “I didn’t bring anything.”

“He probably would have just sneered at it, anyway,” John said, to comfort him, and because it was true.

“How’ve you been?” Greg asked. It had been nearly eight months since they’d spoken. John’s hair was visibly greyer. Greg imagined his was, as well, but who could really tell?

John held up his hands, defending. “Yeah, I can’t.” He grimaced and stepped back.

“Oh.” Greg felt a familiar stab, made his own surrendering gesture in return. “Yeah, OK.”

“Sorry.”

“You’re all right,” Greg assured.

“I’ll leave you to it,” John said, and adjusted his coat collar upward against the start of a spitting rain. “Take care of yourself.”

“You, too.”

They exchanged frowning expressions that passed for smiles, and John marched away from him, and Greg turned to the headstone with _Sherlock Holmes_ deeply etched in mirror black.

“What do you make of that?” he said, under his breath, and then shuddered, shivering, cold. “Anyway. Come home.”

*

“Here, Poppet, climb up here.” Greg’s face was devilish, his mouth tilted high to one side. Sherlock hummed, long and deep, and drew his knee over Greg’s thighs, straddling him, nudging their bollocks together. He dragged his long fingers in serpentine trails down the length of Greg’s chest from shoulders to waist, braced himself straight-armed against Greg’s hips, pinning him in place.

John, meantime, was lying on his side with his chest pressed against Greg’s upper arm, braced up on one elbow, and he licked his palm and caught up both of their cocks in the circle of his fist, stroking and squeezing. Greg huffed something that in some other context would have been a laugh, and Sherlock let out a quick, high-pitched moan. John carried on for a few more strokes, thrusting his own erection against Sherlock’s thigh; it was so much less than satisfying, but pleasing his men was reward of its own, and both of them were gasping. Greg fumbled for the bottle of slick on the bedside table, drizzled it over their pricks and John’s fingers, then into his own palm. He reached for John though the angle was awkward, and Sherlock curled forward to catch John’s mouth with his own, their tongues sliding together, curling and then retreating.

John had thrilled from the very beginning at the superheated novelty of _more_ hands caressing and grasping, _more_ nipples to lick or pinch, a truly magnificent variety of textures and shapes to admire with all five senses. Sherlock, all angles beneath his sharp suits, was an assemblage of surprising curves when in the nude; while Greg, who projected an unfortunate illusion of paunchiness, was pleasingly hard of chest, thigh, and calf, a Sunday morning footballer, daily runner, twice-weekly weightlifter. John never tired of looking his fill of them—either of them, both of them—or of their smells, or _jeezus_ , the sounds they made. He endeavoured to please them, make himself worthy of their apparent admiration of his chest hair, careful hands, creative thinking.

They shifted, Sherlock collapsed between them, stretching his legs with a grateful groan, on his side facing John with Greg nuzzled up behind him, he really was the most spoiled man, but he deserved a bit of spoiling after so many years holding himself at aritificial distance. They settled arms around him, and passed around the slick again, Greg rubbing off against his plump arse and stacked thighs, John taking him in hand. Sherlock repaid John’s favour with his gorgeous, long fingers, and the three fell into perfect, three-part rhythm, and the air around them sang with groans and gasping, muttered declarations and breathless encouragements. Kisses, when they came, were just as likely to be bites, or sucks, gusts of panting breath prevention against properly closing their lips together.

After chain-reaction orgasms, settling of their breath, breaking apart to fetch towels and glasses of water and pyjama bottoms and the pillow that had fallen overboard, then coming back together beneath their tangle of quilts and cotton blankets, they kissed goodnight, _that was fantastic, mm, you madman, sleep well then, shall I turn out the light?_ And, yes, that was indeed fantastic, but so was this, and so was the three of them around the kitchen table, the three of them in armchairs in the lounge, the three of them in a taxi, the three of them together. Properly mad for each other. Easy as that.

 


End file.
